Let’s pretend I didn’t set the camera up on the self timer to take these, okay? Let’s just go with the idea that I have someone following me around in the craft room taking my picture and that I didn’t at all have to run over to where I wanted to stand and wait for the picture to take, then run back over to make sure it looked okay or if I needed to take another and repeat the process more times than I’d like. PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

My Dorothy apron is done. This one fits differently than the one I made before and I’m not sure why… seam allowances, maybe? I’m almost certain I didn’t pay attention to seam allowances in the past so that might be why the other one felt like a better fit on me. I’ll have to go dig it out of the kitchen closet and compare and see, I suppose. Maybe my body has just changed more than I realized post pregnancy.

Anyway. That photo of the pup and I just kind of happened. I kept trying to get pictures of me in the apron and they weren’t working out very well. I either looked awful, or the apron fabric needed fixed, or some other random thing about it was off. We don’t let the dog upstairs very often because she’s 13 with back issues but when I’m home alone I let her up with me if I’m going to be hiding in the craft room for a while. She just kind of jumped up on me to get my attention… and the snap has turned into my new favorite photo of us.

So onto the next project… the Wiksten tank dress. Yes, yes, THAT pattern again. This is probably going to be the last one I make for a little while because I would like to try out another pattern or two that I’ve purchased. I’m still working on that Mesa dress but just have hemming to do and I have to wait for my Amazon order to arrive and bring me the twin needle I need. So for now I’m using up more of the fabric I’ve recently purchased to make a dress version. It’s definitely a slower process than the last version. That brighter blue is sheer so I have to line the dress with some sheath fabric. which meant cutting the pattern twice, then stitching the layers for the fronts and backs together before I could begin stitching up the shoulders and sides. I have all of that done now, however, and just need to hem it all and apply the facing. I can’t decide if I should leave the curved hem, though, or just take it to my cutting mat and make it a straight cut. I think it’s a bit long, given that I’m only 5’2″, but I might wait until the husband gets home so I can ask his opinion first before I do anything.

I’ve had a very glorious kid-free day today, with taking the toddler to Nana’s and then coming back home to have time to myself. It’s been lovely. I’m not totally ready for it to end, however – I had this laundry list of things I wanted to work on today with my free time because I’m a huge over achiever and I’ve only gotten a fraction of it done. There’s still a bit of time, and there’s always after bedtime. But I have this really nasty habit of thinking everything I want to get done will take half (or a quarter) of the time it actually takes.

Allow me to present the most pathetic garden in the history of gardens. Ok, exaggeration – obviously. But it’s pretty sad. The tomatoes didn’t get staked. The peppers didn’t even remotely make it. The bean trellis (which is home to beans that were never planted) is full of morning glory vines aka the vine of death and doom that we nearly had beaten back.

Overall, I’ve basically just been the worst person ever about keeping up with it this year.

Oh well. There’s always next year. And, with any luck, next year might be at a new place. IF I can get a freaking realtor to ever return my calls/emails. There’s this perfect property for sale with a sweet little 2 bedroom house on it. It needs work, but it’s perfect for what I’ve wanted, both in the amount of land and the size of home (which would require much purging, but would be totally worth it). It’ll probably be snatched up before we can even get ready to place an offer but I’m trying to not let that deter me.

Regardless, I’ve gotten a bit of motivation again and have been trying to buckle down and tighten up our spending. We have a new roof coming this month, which is draining a lot of our savings (hooray home ownership), so we need to not only replenish that but also start saving back for a down payment. It’s incredibly hard to find the kind of property I want, in the area I want, without spending a small fortune more than I’d like to. My only hope is to put enough of a down payment on a place that I can keep the mortgage low enough that I could work part time and farm part time (my ideal situation, honestly – I don’t want to take care of a house and a kid on top of acres of land and chickens and such while trying to work as much as I am now. That’s pretty much a recipe for a giant meltdown.) So who knows – maybe in a year or two I’ll finally be able to stop dreaming of a farm.

A year ago today this kid made his grand appearance. This last year has been rough with many highs and lows, but we survived. We’ve all survived. But I’m especially proud of myself and that survival thing.

This kid is officially one and we celebrated with Peter Rabbit and carrot cake. I’ve promised the husband that I won’t go so overboard on the future. I really couldn’t help it, though – Peter Rabbit is just about my favorite kids book ever and Declan really loves the bunnies in the books we have and the one I knit him. And, truthfully, I didn’t really go THAT overboard – I had probably 100 different ideas for food and whatnot and ended up keeping all of that simple. So, really, he should thank me for not doing all the things I wanted to do.

Peter Rabbit will be making an appearance from now on every Easter, especially since we don’t celebrate the religious aspect of the holiday, so I can’t wait to dig all these decorations back out next Spring (see, it can’t count as going overboard if you’re going to actually re-use the decorations every year for a holiday, right?). The bunny cake was… eh. I don’t understand how to bake with these fancy pans – the instructions say to make the sides of the cake higher than the middle… but, hello, gravity called: they’re breaking up with your silly directions. I don’t know, maybe I’m doing something wrong? The one half of the bunny had broken ears, and there was no way I was going to be able to shave the sides down to piece this thing together to make the 3D cake I imagined. But, you know? I don’t even care – it looks damn adorable sitting on a bed of kale on my cake plate regardless.

With so much rain and dreary days it hasn’t much felt like summer on the days I’m home. Today, though… today is different. Today is officially a summer day. Hot, sunny, with the sun beating on your back. Finally I could blow up the baby pool and go outside with the Little Mr and play. He wasn’t much interested in sitting in the pool, and that’s probably my fault because I didn’t fill it up this morning for the water to warm until now, but it turns out he really wanted to play in the sprinkler setting on our hose attachment. So we sat there while he ran his hands through and picked up the hose and waved it around, splashing himself in the face and then getting angry about it and throwing it back down on the ground. Then it was back inside for something cold – frozen pureed pear in a mesh feeder for him, and coconut cream pie ice cream for me.

Welcome

Pardon the garden. A phrase I’m most likely to utter anytime anyone visits the house during the growing seasons of spring through fall. Sure, there are pretty flowers and delicious veggies in there somewhere, but they might be a little hard to find amidst the mess of overgrown grass, dandelions, and weeds that have found their way in there and haven’t been pulled. Read On